Enterprise retires; Shatner doesn’t

By Matthew Heimer

The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise and the starship Enterprise: As of tomorrow, when the U.S. Navy will officially retire the real-life vessel, William Shatner’s career will have outlasted them both.

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The actor, Priceline pitchman, sometime talk-show host and spoken-word performance artist will turn 82 next March, and he shows no signs of slowing down. Shatner has been touring the country with his autobiographical one-man show. And this month, he launched a very 21st century business venture—if you’d like to be able to program your phone to deliver text in his unique…pause-laden…delivery, there’s an app for that.

But Shatner’s career wouldn’t have had such staying power, of course, if he hadn’t landed the iconic role of Captain James T. Kirk in the Star Trek TV series—putting him at the helm of the fictional U.S.S. Enterprise. Kirk commanded the original starship in the series and in three movies before that ship retired the hard way in 1984’s Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, in which Kirk programmed the ship to self-destruct to save it from capture by Klingons. (Check out the trailer—and the fabulous mid-1980s leather costumes—on YouTube.) There have been at least five other Enterprises on various Star Trek spin-offs, but let’s get real here: You never forget your first starship.

U.S. Navy

As for the real-life Enterprise, it’s a mere sapling to Shatner’s ancient oak: It set sail on its maiden voyage in 1962, just in time to see duty in a blockade of Fidel Castro’s regime during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Its most memorable distinction: It was the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. (The U.S. Navy now has 10 others, and France has one, too.)

Shatner announced Thursday that he’d be attending the Enterprise retirement ceremony in Norfolk, Va.—officially called an “inactivation.” But his publicist announced this morning that Shatner had to rework his schedule and had canceled his appearance. Evidently The Negotiator is always in demand.

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Encore looks at the changing nature of retirement, from new rules and guidelines for financial security to the shifting identities, needs and priorities of people saving for and living in retirement. Our lead blogger is editor Matthew Heimer, and frequent contributors include editor Amy Hoak, writer Catey Hill, and MarketWatch columnists Elizabeth O’Brien, Robert Powell and Andrea Coombes. Encore also features regular commentary from The Wall Street Journal retirement columnists Glenn Ruffenach and Anne Tergesen and the Director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, Alicia H. Munnell.